People Not Places
By Invincible featuring Abeer
Detroit, Michigan, United States
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LYRICS: Prepare for take off Touch down- ben gurion Strict search make sure nobody enters with bombs Blue white flags For the birthright Tour I’m on Never mention 3 villages the airport is on recent history buried but it speaks thru the sand all jews- law of return-I don’t seem to understand a land without a people for people without a land? But I see a man standing with a key and a deed in his hand First stop- museum of the holocaust walkin outside- in the distance-saw a ghost throwing a Molotov Houses burnt with kerosene-mass graves- couldn’t bare the scene it wasn’t a pogrom-it was the ruins of Deir Yassin next stop shopping at the kenyon malcha built it on the back of the town Al Malha wishing we could call it its name uphauled by the change and now a mall full of chains is all that remains Chorus: my Ima misses people not places has she seen the towns with names in Arabic the Hebrew replaces? The policies are evil and racist, deceitful and heinous You’ll never be a peaceful state with legal displacement (Abeer- Arabic translation) Remember the names of our cities before you came and replaced it Remember and tell me how am i supposed not to miss a nation living within us? At the wailing wall I’m rollin a wish Then stick it in between the hole in the bricks I’m feelin more than melancholy This used to be the Moroccan quarter Until we stopped em short and Now their grandkids is the ones that’s throwing rocks at borders I aint one to play and I don’t pray often so I’m AWOLin While u making native sons feel like a stranger in they own land like James Baldwin This aint about a Quaran or a synagogue or Mosque or Torah The colonizer break it into acres and dunums Erasing the culture- Changed Haifa to Chaifa, changed Yaffa to Yaffo- the old city left to haunt hummus pronounced chumoos we ate in a restaurant next hit the discotheque yes we on the list of guests Palestinians cant get in its blatant disrespect Cops stop em for speakin they language its dangerous To repeat it when With history we disconnect Chorus 200 year old Olive trees uprooted the groves to build a wall now Their future enclosed settlements spreading like cancer and toxic sewage polluted the roads now full of checkpoints I superimpose the truth and it shows Village ruins overgrown with planted trees Who’d have thought the "desert blooms" and Tubishvat I cant believe- this aint environmental Disguising lies extincting lives like manatees Callin it a transfer? Please- More like a catastrophe! Birthright tours recruiting em, confuse em into moving in Claim its only names and words but denying the root of them Power been abusing it our past never excusing them 60 years since 48 and 40 since Jerusalem my boy Shadi wanted to visit it so badly he lied he’s diabetic to see it for 5 seconds One Nine Four ruled the courts in the case mom, you can’t disconnect a people from the importance of place Chorus side note: There is a remix of this song in the works featuring members of DAM. I also am turning this piece into a docu-music video and educational workshop tool on this topic. Another workshop is being created to juxtapose "People Not Places" as a case in point expose of colonization in relation to a song/docu-music video of mine about gentrification in Detroit called "Locusts". |
ABOUT THIS PIECE: "People Not Places" by Invincible featuring Abeer (produced by Vaughan T).
This song was inspired by and has been in the works since a conversation with my mom (or ima in Hebrew) 5 years ago, when I asked her if she missed "back home",(which she calls Israel) and she responded profoundly- "I miss people not places". I realized what a privilege it was to not miss a place and land that so many Palestinians have been displaced from.
The song takes the listener on a journey through a haunted "birthright" tour where the buried Palestinian significance of each location comes to light. Along the route i expose the process of historic and continued colonization as being even deeper than land seizure and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, but one that is invested in erasing the Arabic language, culture, and memory.
One of my main aims is to destroy the myth of a "Jewish birthright" to a land Palestinians are denied the Right of Return to.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: It is truly rare to find an artist like Invincible. Her spitfire wordplay has gotten her acclaim from Hip Hop fans all across the world, while her active involvement in progressive social change has taken her music beyond entertainment, and towards actualizing the change she wishes to see.
Repping Detroit, MI, many are already familiar with Invincible’s work with Waajeed and the Platinum Pied Pipers, Finale, the all-female ANOMOLIES crew, Black Star,on Free The P, and many others. Dubbed by XXL Magazine as "every A&Rs worst nightmare" for rejecting major label deals and general industry politrix, Invincible started her own record label, EMERGENCE, self-releasing her long-awaited full length LP, ShapeShifters, June, 2008.
She works with Detroit Summer, and traveled along with a youth leader to the West Bank as part of a US Palestine Youth Solidarity Network delegation. She is also a member of the International Jewish Solidarity Network.
Abeer Alzinaty,aka Sabreena da Witch is a Palestinian artists,R&B singer and educator, was born and raised in Lyd , Palestine/Israel, 20 minutes from Tel Aviv, and 40 minutes from Jerusalem. The challenges of being a Palestinian woman living inside of Israel led Abeer to express herself through art. She studied film in the film department in Tel Aviv university, and photography in Bezalel Academy of art in Jerualem. She became active in political and social events in the Israeli, and the Palestinian territories, After the second Intifada started in 2000. She is featured on DAM's song"Born Here", and stars in the film "Slingshot Hip Hop".
